EF2 Tornado — Washington, Alabama

2022-12-14 · near Silver Cross, Washington, Alabama

Event narrative

An EF2 tornado has been confirmed in far northern Washington into southeastern Choctaw Counties. The tornado touched down as an EF0 along Dry Creek Road where a few trees were uprooted. The next available road was along County Road 31 where significant tree damage occurred to the north of Frankville. Numerous trees were snapped or uprooted in a 120 yard swath. Significant snapping and deforestation seemed evident looking further southwest along the track; however, this area was inaccessible at the time and required satellite data to confirm the degree of damage.

After review of high resolution satellite imagery, several changes have been made to this tornado. The first major change was to the intensity of the tornado. Complete deforestation of trees to the southwest of County Road 31 was noted on satellite imagery, indicating numerous if not all trees in the path were uprooted/snapped low at their base. Based on this, the intensity is bumped to 130mph making this a high-end EF2. The next major change is to end the tornado just northeast of County Road 31. Satellite imagery indicates the tornado occluded to the left rather abruptly, and reached its widest point of 140 yards as it once again produced EF2 damage with widespread deforestation during the occlusion process. The damage path ended abruptly once the tornado was moving due north on satellite imagery. It's possible it continued to travel to the north for a bit while weakening, however, based on the storm survey on Blue Dirt Road it never reached the road. This satellite imagery explains the discontinuity that was noted in the original storm survey downstream by Blue Dirt Road where a new tornado began.

Wider weather episode

A very warm and moist airmass developed ahead of a strong cold front. Thunderstorms developed ahead of the front and produced damaging winds along with a 2-EF2 tornadoes in Choctaw County Alabama along with wind damage in Baldwin County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.6800, -88.2140)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1072169. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.